her; and here I was,
before our summer holiday was over, and before we had settled down to
that home life in which trouble and annoyance must needs come, getting
out of patience and saying cruel things; and there was Bessie, sitting
in the summer twilight with a light shawl drawn over her shoulders,
pouting her pretty lips with vexation, and digging the toes of her
little boots into the balustrade in front of us, because I had expressed
a pious wish that her mother was in Jericho. I declare, if there weren't
tears gathering in her gentle blue eyes!

I was angry with myself, and, putting my arm around her slender waist, I
laid my cheek against hers and said soothingly, "Never mind, darling! I
didn't mean it. Don't think any more about it."

But as we sat for the next five minutes without saying a word, I
couldn't help pondering on the possibilities of the future, for Mrs.
Pinkerton was to live with us. That was one of the understood conditions
of our bargain, and it was evident that she was to furnish the test of
all my good resolutions.

Mrs. Pinkerton had been left a widow when Bessie was twelve years old,
with a neat little cottage in the suburbs of the city and a snug
competence in a secure investment. I was fairly settled in business,
with an income that would enable us to live in modest comfort, and was
determined not to disturb the investment or have it drawn upon in any
way for household expenses. But the old lady--I already began to speak
of her by that disrespectful epithet, although she was still under
fifty--was to live with us. I had readily acquiesced in that
arrangement, for was it not my darling's wish? And I could not decently
make any objection, for it was mighty convenient to have a pretty
cottage, ready furnished, in one of the finest suburbs of the city in
which I was employed.

Mrs. Pinkerton was a good woman in her way: how could she be anything
else and the mother of such an angel as I had secured for my wife? She
meant well, of course; I admitted that, and I ought to be on the
pleasantest terms with her, and determined from the first that I would
be. But somehow we were not congenial, and when that is the case the
best people in the world find it hard to get along agreeably together.

The course of true love between Bessie and me had run very smooth. From
the moment my old school-fellow, her brother George, now in Paris
studying medicine, had introduced me to her, I had been completely won